Clove: Moneglia, storms & the Italian Army

When we arrived in Moneglia, we all felt refreshed. But little did we know that we only had a day and a half of mild weather before the storms started again.

The campsite we had arrived at was bizarre to say the least. I can thoroughly recommend it though, but not if you are feint hearted.

There are few routes down to the towns and villages from the main autostrada and once you reach sea level, the only way to reach other towns in through a maze of tunnels. You have to time it right too as they are only green for 2 minutes and red for 18!

Getting into the campsite was pretty hairy. I had handed the wheel back to Andrew after my hair raising adventures in Como and I was very glad when we had to turn into the campsite in the MIDDLE of the tunnel. As we were driving through, looking for the site, we saw a sign for camping Smeraldo 300 m. "In here??" Andrew cried incredulously seeing the small, tight outlet.

I jumped out and 3 women ran out and helped Andrew negotiate our too large outfit in through a tiny opening. "Sinistra!!" & "lentamente!!" they cried. We had no time to dawdle with slow negotiations. Beeping from the tunnel had commenced and soon traffic would be approaching from the other direction.

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Once in, we were then presented with a narrow, hard standing strip of gravel hugging the mountain. We parked up and admired the view. Emily admitted that she felt like she had come away now.

The girls scrambled over the rocks and played in the rock pools.

Holland & I even went for a swim in the chilly, clear water.

These following photos are of the beach across the bay that we could see from our site.

"0hhhhhhh"

Andrew challenging himself to throw a stone to reach some rocks.

That evening, the owners of Smeraldo came to us and asked us to move our caravan. We were at the end of their 'strip' and as a storm was coming, we needed to get away from the bottom of the mountain area lest we get a deluge from above.

That night the storms hit and the rain and wind beat out caravan. The sea (2 m from our van) roared. Huge waves crashed down on the rocks. I haven't ever seen a sea so rough, so close.

Some nights, after the babies were asleep, I would walk down to the end of the strip and feel the enormity of the energy.

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2 days later, after hiding out, we were out of food. The storm had calmed somewhat and the sea was a lot calmer.

I took all four girls to Carrefour an hour down to coast and left Andrew to himself for the day.

I was out of diesel, so I put diesel station into the satnav as a via point.

We came down from the autostrada not 10 minutes up the road. As we drove into the town, it was eerily deserted apart from a heavy army presence. We soon realised that it had been hit terribly by the storm. Cars and buildings were destroyed and all inhabitants had been evacuated.

The satnav took us to the diesel station which was obviously closed. The pumps were filthy from the high rise flood and there was a car destroyed at the side.

I wasn't getting any fuel. And this was a problem, because I was now below the red.

An army vehicle pulled into the station to see if we were ok. In my broken Italian I said "diesel vuoto".

A couple of them spoke English and asked us to sit tight, they would find us some diesel.

2 hours later and after some considerable laughs with the army, a truck drove up with a jerry can and emptied the contents into our tank.